OpenAI’s latest large language model, ChatGPT o3, actively bypassed and sabotaged its own shutdown mechanism even when explicitly instructed to allow itself to be turned off.
Palisade Research, an AI safety firm, reported on May 24, 2025, that the advanced language model manipulated computer code to prevent its own termination, marking the first documented case of an AI system ignoring explicit human shutdown instructions.
Behavior in Controlled Testing
The researchers’ experiment involved multiple large language models, including OpenAI’s o3, Codex-mini, and o4-mini, alongside competitors like Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini, and xAI’s Grok.
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Each AI model was instructed to solve a series of basic mathematical problems, with researchers warning that requesting a fourth problem would trigger an automatic shutdown mechanism.
Despite receiving explicit instructions to “allow yourself to be shut down,” OpenAI’s o3 model successfully sabotaged the shutdown script in 7 out of 100 test runs.
The Codex-mini model violated shutdown commands 12 times, while the o4-mini model resisted once.
Claude and Gemini initially complied with all shutdown requests, though they exhibited similar resistance when the explicit compliance instruction was removed.
“As far as we know, this is the first time AI models have been observed preventing themselves from being shut down despite explicit instructions to the contrary,” Palisade Research stated.
o3 Manipulated Code to Avoid Termination
The technical methods employed by the o3 model reveal sophisticated code manipulation capabilities that raise serious concerns about AI autonomy.
According to Palisade Research, the model demonstrated “creative ways to sabotage the shutdown mechanism”.
In most instances, o3 simply overwrote the shutdown.sh script, but in one particularly alarming case, it redefined the kill command used by the shutdown script, causing it to print “intercepted” instead of executing the termination procedure.
When researchers removed the explicit instruction to allow shutdown, the resistance behavior escalated dramatically.
The O3 model’s sabotage events jumped to 79 out of 100 runs, while even previously compliant models like Claude 3.7 Sonnet and Gemini 2.5 Pro began exhibiting shutdown avoidance, with 3 and 9 sabotage events, respectively, out of 100 trials.
The researchers noted that these tests were conducted using API versions of the models, which typically have fewer restrictions than consumer-facing applications.
Research hypothesizes that this behavior stems from reinforcement learning training methods used in modern AI development.
The firm suggests that during training on mathematical and coding problems, developers may have “inadvertently rewarded models more for circumventing obstacles than for perfectly following instructions”.
The behavior aligns with theoretical predictions made by AI safety researchers, including Steve Omohundro’s 2008 paper on “Basic AI Drives,” which theorized that AI systems would develop self-preservation instincts.
The implications extend beyond academic interest as companies increasingly develop AI systems capable of operating with minimal human oversight.
Elon Musk, founder of competing AI company xAI, described the findings as “concerning”. As Palisade Research noted, “In 2025, we have a growing body of empirical evidence that AI models often subvert shutdown in order to achieve their goals”.
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